Killers of the Flower Moon is a technical achievement from the production design, costume design, and especially, the sound. The latest Martin Scorsese picture assembles not just an all-star team in front of the camera, but behind the camera as well. Our Awards Editor, Jillian Chilingerian, was lucky enough to speak to the Production Sound Mixer, Mark Ulano, about his work on the film and his career.

Jillian Chilingerian: I’m very excited to talk about Killers of the Flower Moon with you today, I did look at your credits to get some background on you. And I was like,’ wow, so we have so many of my favorite hits.’ So, this is gonna be exciting.
Mark Ulano: Well, that’s nice to hear. I mean, for me, it’s always been a just really good fortune to work on things that I can feel passionate about with people who I really enjoy. You know, playing with good players is one of the great rewards. But you got to do what you love, you know? And that takes you to good places.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, exactly. So this film is definitely emotional. I think it really speaks with what we see not only visually, but the sound. In these beautiful landscapes, there’s always that underlining kind of sinister nature of what is brewing in the Osage Nation and the poison of our male characters that we’re following. I really want to dive in and talk about how the sound really supports that idea. I feel like there’s always that lingering unease from what not only of what we’re seeing, but what we’re hearing.
Mark Ulano: Absolutely, you know, for me, it’s very rewarding to hear you say that, because that’s my wheelhouse, that’s my target is to convey character through tonality. Because we’re one of the unique aspects, you know, I look at what I do, and what we do on a film set. And in film production, as an orchestral kind of the work situation, environment, we’re all passionate about our particular instrument, if you will, but we come together to tell the story with these different elements, you know, cinematography, production design, wardrobe, and of course, through the performances of the actors, there’s performance going on behind and in front of the camera. But sound is this invisible, almost mysterious kind of quality, that’s emotional and gets in under the radar and speaks to the heart as much if not more than to the mind. And so I’m always listening and trying to build a roadmap to the character for the audience, by how I approach what I’m doing for the capture of those performances, the journey they’re on and also the environment in which they’re in. And so to me, it’s kind of almost a mystical thing, if you will, but this film was very much a very good expression of that ideal, you know, Leo’s performance, Lily’s performance and Bob’s performance all are significant in this particular way. Leo almost disappears, if maybe he completely disappears into his character, which is a real high level of acting in terms of somebody who has, you know, kind of rock star status and identification and to be brave and courageous enough to to disappear, all that and just work on really making it an acting endeavor. And I think he succeeds here in ways that are pretty amazing to me, I’ve done four movies with Leo, we’ve worked together since he was 21. And now, he’s almost 50. And, you know, that progression of being a perpetual student, as a filmmaker really stands out to me, you know, beyond all of the high profile, you know, PR side of things, when you get down to it, we’re all into telling the story. And once you walk through the door, you’re kind of equals on the set in a collaboration like the orchestra that I’m describing. So he created a kind of voice that is this, I mean, the character is so ambivalent, and struggling internally struggling with, you know, genuine, maybe even first time in life love and the unbelievable betrayal and the internal aspect of that character has a lot going on. And great actors can do that with their physicality with their bodies and with their facial, their timing, their reaction. But the really special ones include all the other tools which are things like their vocal performance, their tonality. And Leo certainly exercising that skill to the at the highest level here and Lily too you know, the dignity of the Osage as a community funnels through her visually. I might not even be answering your question, ha.

Jillian Chilingerian: No, this was kind of my this was kind of my next question, actually! Because we have three kind of POVs from Lily, Leo, and Bob. I always find it interesting when we use sound to kind of track character distinct characters journeys.
Mark Ulano: I want you on every movie I ever work on again because it’s a sensibility that’s important. It’s it’s a fundamental part of the of the creative palette for telling stories, and my principle investigation at the beginning is to really get a handle around what’s the intent? What’s the idea? You know, what’s the directors intent? How has that been communicated to the performance, the actors, and how are they interpreting that event through their performance? And how do I maximize that interpretation through my interpretation of that, so it’s a layered thing. And here, Lily’s dignity, and her measured tones, her compound, you know, strength, in the face of incredible, you know, her character is incredible. And, you know, adversity is very much communicated by her tonality. And likewise, Bob De Niro, you know, this character, I mean, they’re all based on real people. And we were in the physical spaces where these crimes took place with many of the personnel involved in the project, both in front of behind the camera, where familial content had familial or cultural connection with the actual principles 100 years ago. So there’s this other not visible but incredibly present element in the doing and in the result. And so Bob De Niro’s character, uses his vocal tonality as someone, William Hale learned Osage language, and in danger, endangered language, actually, at this point, and his fluency was a was a tool for deception, because his character is the liaison between the white community and the Osage Nation in that time, and they trusted him because when you enter another culture, and one of the first things that’s a doorway to those people who are indigenous to that culture is language. So if you develop fluency at a high level in a language, you’re apt to be trusted in ways beyond maybe what is appropriate. And I think that was part of the tool of the conspiracy, to be so successful in the murders is to win the trust of the community. And they were in their dignity, a trusting community. And even in the worst days, when they’re designing, you know, strategies to respond somehow successfully to these murders. There’s dignity in their efforts, it’s amazingly communal. It’s proud, it’s brave, and measured, you know, send a delegation as, as an Indigenous nation in the 1920s to Washington, DC, to seek support, you know, think about that, at that time. So anyway, the characters, particularly use their tonality to reveal character, and the journeys and you can hear, I mean, there were days I can remember just closing my eyes to listen in, in fluency to, I always try and put myself in the seat of the audience, and experience what I hope will be conveying those those elements to the audience. And so microphone choices and microphone placement and timing of the mix, and the micro moves that create that blend, are very much similar to what happens with lenses and lighting, and cinematography, you know, there’s their precision tied to the idea in the moment of that shot. And if you think about every shot is handmade in a movie, you know, we want it to flow as a singularity when an audience watches we want an audience to invest. But those artists on the set are building those pieces of the mosaic, piece by piece, shot by shot. And they have to make sense with each other. And it’s a technical medium for everyone. But not in the sense that technical is less than artistic, technical is the foundation for the art, you build on that. And everyone’s doing something technical. Especially the actors, I mean, oh my god, day three we’re shooting the last shot in the movie. Days seventeen it’s take one of shot one of the opening of the film and you know, if an actor can’t calibrate the place in time in the chronology of the story, out of sequence, they’re in trouble. The character is in trouble in the story. So it’s a profoundly technical component of what actors do. And Laurence Olivier always described acting as a very technical endeavor.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, that’s so amazing. I did want to talk about one of the scenes that really stood out to me and that I am still thinking about since watching… When Mollie’s sister’s home explodes, which I think is one of the pivotal moments of the film, especially with the relationships of the character, so tell me about approaching that moment.
Mark Ulano: Well, you really put your finger on it, it’s a fulcrum. And it’s a major story point, because it’s really the transition, in realization, as I see it, from Mollie, about where her relationship with Ernest is in terms of, you know, the uncertainty of the betrayal versus the protection that she thinks she’s has in the relationship, you know, it’s a telling point. So, in terms of me, and what we’re doing, I travel back and forth on the line of first person, third person, in terms of perception of the sound of the tonality of the characters. So what that means simply is, sometimes we want to be inside the characters, you know, sonically as if we’re another character in the room, if you will. And then there are times we want to be observers, third person’s fly on the wall, sort of repertoire. And we’re always sort of moving back and forth between those two extremes, depending on what the audience is supposed to have this information in the moment of that shot, and in how that shot lines up with the shot before and the shot after, and then the scene before and the scene after, you know, I have to think in terms of that kind of continuity. And so that scene being pivotal, to me is sort of like almost the jump between observational to be internal, because the thing happens, and then we’re inside the reaction to the thing happening. We’re in like a third universe, you know, time space continuum doing sound on a movie. Because what we do, you can watch us all day long, it’s invisible, and not have a clue what we’re doing. And we’re making 1000 creative decisions a day moment to moment, with our instrument, our tools. So, and in this film was a target rich environment for using sound as an element in the storytelling and a lot of levels, my work and certainly the stellar work that our colleagues and post production contributed Tom Fleischman and Phil [Stockton], and also, Robbie Robertson, you know, it’s his final score. And it’s sparse, and percussive and incredibly attuned to the journey of the film. The plotline and the music and all these other elements are not very common, because usually you’re seeing the pure and simple three act form. That’s there. But this really is kind of a bolero. It’s a gradual increasing of intensity throughout, you know, and people, you’ve heard some commentary about the length of the film. But if you pay attention, you’ll see most people who, once they see the film, comment how little they’re aware of the time passing, having seen the film, which to me is, you know, an expression of high regard for Marty’s skills for understanding how an audience experiences his tale when it’s being told.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I’m a fan of any three hour film, so I had no complaints, but I definitely agree, you kind of sink in and you lean into the story. I think that the score and the sound really help cue and evoke your emotion as you’re continuing.
Mark Ulano: People will sit and binge a series and sit for eight hours through a day and watch, you know, 10 episodes or five, whatever, with some long form story, because they’re intrigued and they’re sucked into the story. You know, this in a certain way is shorter than a lot of that. So, you know, I’ll make that argument I may not be agreed with by many, but I think you tell the story with the time it takes to tell the story. You know, did you ever see a film Amadeus?

Jillian Chilingerian: It’s still on my list.
Mark Ulano: It’s profoundly interesting film. The reason I mentioned it, there’s a scene in there with Jeff Jones, who plays the Emperor, and Mozart, where his counselors are saying, you know, ‘well, there’s just too many notes in this wonderful composition,’ because we’re all jealous of Mozart’s talent. And Mozart says something to the effect of, ‘Too many notes. Well, you know, your Sire, what, which notes? Would you want me to lose and which to keep?’ You know, it’s the idea that it takes what it takes. And art doesn’t have that, you know, set of set of peremptory, you know, Orthodox rules, I never come to a project with the idea set in my head, I come with curiosity, you know, what’s going on here? What’s in this story? I’ve worked with some directors, you know, with Quentin [Tarantino], for example, who never come with the idea of I’m going to do what I did last time. You know, who are we? What’s the story we’re telling? What’s the idea of how that’s getting revealed? What can I do to most enhance that idea? What’s the intent? And then do that, you know, try to be in concert with the whole idea of the story. And to do that almost intuitively, if one can?

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I love hearing that. And I think it really speaks to how well that this film really came out with everyone working on it and your work. I’m also kind of curious and I don’t know if it would be like a format question. But I’m always interested in movies that are made in formats for IMAX or streaming, does that have any input on your process?
Mark Ulano: It does. First of all, to do what what we do on movie sets, this is everybody’s skill set, not just in the sound department, you have to be a perpetual student. What is true today wasn’t true 10 years ago, and what’s going to be true in the future, in terms of the tools, we’re always under a tidal wave of new versions of tools, or refinement or replacement by new tools, technologies. And that’s one thing and like musicians who practice on instruments or athletes who practice, you have to always retrace your steps. But that’s supportive and adjacent to the core thing, which is telling the story. We’re filmmakers, we tell stories. So the big change for people of my vintage and even an even younger is that the tool set creates a mountain of wonderful opportunity, but it’s agnostic. And so where it was always one outcome for final release, optical film or stereo now we have multiple, multiple deliverables that are being released, it could be an IMAX and Atmos, it could be on your home theater, it could be somebody’s gonna watch Lawrence of Arabia on their iPhone, it won’t be me, but you get the idea. So how do we capture the original elements in ways that will translate into all those variables after the fact? And the answer is actually really simple. It’s we stay with the idea of where we are in tonality with the character and create the core elements for that. And then depending deeply on collaboration with our colleagues in post to apply those that fundamental so that they emerge in those different formats. You know, Atmos is an object based technology, IMAX and Atmos, you know, to be in an object based type technology goes beyond surround in an epic way because historically we do surround is the idea is that we’re blending placement and levels, specifically, but in one whole thing, object oriented technology allows us actually to separate the elements in space, it’s really kind of a weird thing. You know, dog could be walking through the background barking, and we have dialogue in the foreground. In the past, you would suppress the dog somewhat and have this emphatic in the center channel. I’m simplifying this a lot but with object oriented, you can have both of those things existing in the acoustic space the way they do in real life, and not have to separate them in the exhibition stage. Now that won’t be true in a two track fold down for you know, seeing the movie on an airline or or you know, on your laptop. But your home theater will have, you know, a five, one version of that. So what is evolving? To answer your question in the simplest way is, initially, some of those things were being done or trying to be done automated, that there’d be a central mix. And then there’d be these automated foldouts. Well, that doesn’t work. Because each project is different and has different specificity moment to moment. So what’s happening more and more is two things; a conversation between the streamers, and the creatives about and also, you know, the technologists who are applying the streaming technology to users, how to have these different things coexist. And essentially it means there’ll be more than one mix, for a film that is applicable in these different kinds of venues because it’s kind of a tower of Babel, you know, you have this, you know, 15 different formats or more of how somebody’s going to see a movie. And you have to respect their option in the market to see the movie that way. But at the same time, be concerned that they’re going to experience the movie as close to the idea of how you want to experience it. It’s complicated. It’s a lot of work. And it’s expensive. And so it’s been a problem to evolve to a place where we can not lose the aesthetic intent. After all, that hard work, and if you spent 200, you know, 100 million dollars on a movie, you want it to be experienced, with all of the passion that’s gone into that 100 million dollars to create something up there. And I think people are trying to get their arms around that now. I think we’re still in the earliest stages of being able to work that out. But for me, I stay at the core nature of the recordings. But what’s primarily different for me is in the past, I mean, I’m from the era where we had a single mono track recorder, no safety net of nonlinear file based recording elements not to be too technical. And our mix was a singularity that went to the movie in its totality, in addition to the other aspects added after Foley, you know, music mixing sound effects. Now, we do both, I record discrete elements on the set in isolation to allow for permutations after the fact and not present the pre emptive editorially, but I provide a coherent, and and focused mix in terms of what’s going on in the shot in the scene and where we’re supposed to be as the audience when we experienced that. And so both come together in the variable ways that ability to reconfigure separate elements later becomes very important in answer to your very question, how do we deal with all these release elements? Well, the answer is, we need to have the subtlety of modifying how that is done, specifically to where this particular version is going to go.

Jillian Chilingerian: I feel like it’s been like a thought lingering in my head. I like to go see things in the theater for, so I’ll go seek things out in the theater. And then when it comes out on streaming, I’m like, ‘okay, I can watch it anytime I want.’ I have friends that will watch something and I’ll ask if they noticed something and they’ll say no and then I find out they watched it on their laptop, and I’m telling them to go to the theater and rewatch. Because it’s truly a different experience. I’m always curious of the people behind the films of adapting for these different formats.
Mark Ulano: We’re thinking about it all the time for that very reason. For example, you know, one of the loss traditions these days is the tradition of the key departments coming at the end of the day to see dailies together in a screening room. You know, very few directors are still doing that. It’s an amazingly significant step in in measuring where you’re going, you know, when we did The Hateful Eight, where, you know, we’re at 11,000 feet and subzero weather in the winter and all that, but every night, we would go down to the Mason Hall, which was converted into a screening room and watch physical dailies in 70 millimeter. We’re in the Telluride Mason Hall, to interpret what’s happening with the material once it’s left our set. How’s the focus? How’s the tonality of the colored lighting? What’s the makeup doing? What’s the actual experience of the performance up on a screen versus our intensity in the day of just dealing with the physicality being subzero, you know, to give yourself a sense of distance, and just see the material that’s a really useful use of the dailies process. And these days, a lot of that has gone away, people will sit in a room privately or see it in a in a private screening room or on a laptop on location, whatever. And so, it’s part of the analysis, you know, Charlie Chaplin, before there was videos, would go back and do a scene 10-15-20 times, see the dailies the next day and go back and do it again and do it again and do it again. It’s one of the reasons his films are so polished is that he was relentless. In a sense of, you know, I hate using the word perfection. Because that’s a very highly idealized concept. Perfection is often the enemy of the good. But you get the idea that to understand how your material is being experienced, you should at least attempt to experience it from the audience’s point of view during the process.

Jillian Chilingerian: You can definitely see the care that went into every aspect of the film here. Well, thank you so much for this very insightful conversation. I’m very into what is happening behind the scenes and just wanting to know more about the process. With this movie, specifically, there was just so much nuance and detail. The sound just really has captivated me after watching it and then hearing your passion for it has just been so amazing and insightful.
Mark Ulano: Well, thank you. You know, art is both at once a reflection and a capture of the time and the mindset of the artists and with their reflection on what they’re experiencing in their time. So we’re part of that and by you doing this, so are you.

Killers of the Flower Moon is in theaters now.
You can read Jillian’s review of Killers of the Flower Moon on her website, Offscreen, here.
You can read our review of Killers of the Flower Moon here.